So I was talking to my friends about Africa again, because they were recounting memories of going to the market in South Africa. The apparently went into the market in groups of two, and had a lot of trouble with pushy salespeople and feeling guilty for not buying anything.

When we were in Africa, my sister and I were very thankful for the presence of our aunt during our shopping excursions. We went into different markets on at least three different occasions for cloth, as well as for other stuff at random times. The hardest thing about shopping there is the fact that all items require you to bargain with the seller, which you can only do effectively if you have an idea of the prices. We spent the majority of one of our shopping days just gauging the price range for the cloth we wanted. Its especially confusing because there is a different price for natives than for toubabs (foreigners).

to be continued...

Stuff Environmentalists like....

This is from stuffwhitepeoplelike.com...apparently they have come out with a new focus :)

Media + Science = completely untrustworthy!

So I was reading the science section of the New York Times (probably a bad idea really, I was waiting for the bus...) and there's this little mini-article that is titled 'Recess Found to Improve Behavior.' Now this article is basically saying that no recess is a bad punishment for misbehaving children because there was a study completed that said that, as compared to children who did get regular recess, the children who were stuck inside were more likely to be black, to come from low-income or less educated families, and to live in large cities.

Excuse me? How does this connection, which I am sure is true, translate to recess improving children's behavior? It looks to ME as though children that live in big cities or bad schools don't have proper playgrounds, and that misbehaving children are more likely to get kept inside! I see no causality in these results! This conclusion would NOT pass a scientific journal, and it makes me really not trust the newspapers in anything they try to write! Especially in the science section! Way to go credibility...

Luckily, there was another interesting article in the science section: Apparently they have this relatively new GPS tracker that can be put on forest creatures and is sensitive enough to tell when they are moving, standing still, and what they are doing with other creatures with tags that are near them. It can also tell when they die, and where, so that the scientists can go find them and find out how they died. The fascinating thing is that this tracker weighs only .2 grams, so is small enough even to go on Monarch butterflies and Katydids! They can even go on plant seeds!


Here's a link to the online version of the Recess article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/research/03chil.html

The GPS-tracker article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/science/03angier.html

Comments...

Hey, can someone try to comment on this post, just to see if its working? e-mail me if it doesn't work please...thanks!